


In The Halls of Remembering

by lightgetsin



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Amnesia, Disability, F/M, Post War, Trauma, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-16
Updated: 2006-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:40:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightgetsin/pseuds/lightgetsin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aftermath. (No, I really will never stop writing post-war stories).</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Halls of Remembering

**Author's Note:**

> Request fic for [](http://r-becca.livejournal.com/profile)[**r_becca**](http://r-becca.livejournal.com/), who just asked for "Grimmauld Place." (Yes, I really am getting to those requests). Thanks to [](http://jaimelesmaths.livejournal.com/profile)[**jaimelesmaths**](http://jaimelesmaths.livejournal.com/), as always.

It was still clean. Remus had insisted on that much last summer. If Harry was going to be staying in the house on holidays and Order business, then it was going to be as bright and tidy as they could possibly make it. And they’d done it, with Dumbledore fresh in the ground and the world going to hell around them. They’d made a day of it -- several dozen of Harry’s friends and Order folk -- scrubbed the house from top to bottom, deloused and dehexed, and then crowded into the basement kitchen with blistered hands and a lot of firewhiskey. It was the sort of wake the old man would have liked, Remus thought.

He couldn’t hear them in the kitchen, so he went up. Harry’s usual room was empty, and Remus nodded to himself before climbing the next flight of stairs and turning into the bedroom at the end of the hall.

“—pretty thing,” Sirius was saying, ruffling the pages of a photo album. He sat on the edge of his childhood bed, several boxes open at his feet, old school memorabilia everywhere. He was wearing a threadbare Hogwarts scarf, and an ancient snitch with a broken wing was buzzing in slow, drunken circles around his head. Remus had been afraid that coming back here for the first time would upset him, would set the old black anger – or was that Black anger – vibrating again. But Sirius was relaxed and unconcerned beneath the familial roof, probably more so than he’d been since he could walk. _Of course._

“I don’t know her,” Harry said from the window seat.

“Know whom?” asked Remus, entering.

“Ah, Moony,” said Sirius, with that way of his that made the nickname too deliberate. “You’ll know. Who’s the bird?”

Remus came to peer over his shoulder. Lily and James’s engagement party, he saw at once. Sirius’s hair had been blue all that month, he remembered quite clearly.

“The blonde,” said Sirius, pointing. “With the—“ he glanced at Harry and made a demonstrative gesture that looked rather like a man cupping two beach balls.

“Great big tits?” suggested Harry.

“Oi,” said Sirius. “When’d you learn to say that without turning purple?”

Harry shrugged moodily and didn’t respond. He leaned back into the deep window seat, face turned away. The midafternoon sun was slanting directly in on him, and he was nearly invisible in the bath of too bright light.

“So?” prompted Sirius, tapping the photo. “Please tell me I dated her.”

“Er, no,” said Remus.

“Did I shag her at least?”

“Sorry,” said Remus.

“Damn,” said Sirius. “Say, you wouldn’t be lying to me, would you? Poor Sirius Black, can’t remember a blasted thing before he was brought back from the dead, let’s muck about with his self-confidence while he’s down?”

“It seems to have survived intact,” Remus murmured.

“What about her?” Sirius asked, trying for a redhead this time.

“Nope,” said Remus. “That’s Miranda, one of Lily’s friends.”

“Damn,” said Sirius. “I could swear I got a lot of tail back then.”

_You did_. “Lily would have handed your arse to you if you’d messed around with one of her friends,” Remus said tactfully. “And they all knew you too well, anyway.”

Sirius seemed cheered by this assessment. “Yeah? Where’s she now, do you know?”

“Hogsmeade Cemetery,” said Harry abruptly. “Decapitation curse. They tortured her first, though.”

Footsteps pounded up the stairs, and Ginny swung around the doorframe, hair flattened to her skull and helmet tucked beneath her arm. “Some bloody bugger’s taken my spot,” she said by way of greeting. “I had to put the bike ‘round back. Hullo Remus, Sirius. Sorry I wasn’t here when you came home.”

“That’s all right,” said Sirius, smiling with the distant benevolence he reserved for everyone who wasn’t Harry or Remus – everyone who hadn’t left deep, inextricable impressions perceptible even beneath the fresh, deep snow of a pristine memory. “Wasn’t all that exciting,” he said. “Nice to be off that damned ward, though.”

“I’m sure,” said Ginny, but she wasn’t looking at them anymore. Harry stirred in the window seat, straightening under her gaze. “Mum sends her love,” Ginny said. “Did you sleep okay last night?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“I’ve told Justin that we’ll meet him and his crowd at the Three Broomsticks for drinks tonight,” Ginny continued gamely. “It’ll be nice to see them again, yeah?”

“Sure,” said Harry, and Remus didn’t know what it was in the blurred outline of his face that Ginny saw and he didn’t, but she smiled suddenly, shoulders relaxing.

“Great,” she said. “Mum sent me home with seventeen kilos of food – anyone else for shepherd’s pie?”

“Please,” said Sirius promptly. He was forever trying different foods, searching for old favorites. It was best to engage all the senses, the doctors had told him, to use sight and taste and smell as paths back to his memories. This, Remus had begun to think, was only sound advice so far as they assumed there were memories still there to reclaim.

“What’re you doing?” Ginny asked curiously, coming to look down on them, one hand propped casually on her hip.

“Trying to find out what my type is,” said Sirius, showing her the album. “Not short ones, not blonde ones – I’ll be left with the giant squid if this keeps up.”

“Ah,” said Ginny, flickering a glance at Remus. “You carry on with that, then. I’ll be up with food. Tea?”

“I’ll help,” said Harry, sitting forward and pulling himself to his feet. As he stepped from the sun to the dimness of the bedroom proper, the bandages seemed to fluoresce on his face. He would be able to take them off in two or three weeks, and then wear a medical eye patch for another six months. What he would do after that – dark glasses, another patch, a magical replacement – Remus didn’t know.

“We were just getting to people you know,” said Sirius, hefting one of Hermione’s meticulously assembled albums.

“Later,” said Harry, and guided Ginny out with a hand at the small of her back.

Sirius looked after them, face falling.

“Padfoot,” said Remus, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“I just want to remember,” Sirius said softly.

_And he just wants to forget_. “I know,” Remus said. He slid his hand up to the back of Sirius’s neck and shook him gently. “Come on. How about we play some more shag marry or die with the photos, all right?”

“Sure,” said Sirius, looking down again. “How about her?”

“Nope,” said Remus, settling in for the long haul. One of these days, he thought tiredly, Sirius would run out of girls and start in on the other available options. He’d done it once in his lifetime already, for God’s sake.

Or, Remus thought, looking at the dark head bent over the book, he would remember.

It would not be so simple for Harry.


End file.
